Burning Bush



Which brings me neatly to the latest book which arrived in the mail from me from Granta - the Bush Hater’s Handbook (he says lovely things about that warm and fuzzy man Ashcroft too). Jack Huberman has thoughtfully arranged his compendium of reasons why Bush is evil in a handy A-Z order, so you can pick a subject to rant about easily (obviously he had to select subject areas or it could have been a book the size of the Paris telephone directory). Started reading it this afternoon while munching some lunch al-fresco in front of an 18th century crumbling tomb in Greyfriar’s Kirkyard.



I was having some fun wandering around one of my favourite Boneyards (sorry just read and reviewed volume two of the wonderful Boneyard graphic novel and am in humorous gothic mode) and taking pictures of some of the excellent - and macabre - carvings on some of the larger tombs and monuments. Dancing skeletons, skulls, angels - no I am still describing the funerary carvings, not the tattoos on a biker’s arm. Most of them crumbling away which makes them all the more atmospheric.



Greyfriars is, of course, home to the Mackenzie poltergeist, situated around the tomb of ‘bluidy MacKenzie’, which is ironically next to the Covenanter’s Prison, a group he persecuted mercilessly, earning his sobriquet. I noticed the gleaming new padlock on the doors to his family tomb after the theft of a skull last week (see earlier blog) which lead to two kids being charged (and now found guilty) with a law not used in over a century - violating a sepulchre. Cool. I also passed the family tomb of the great architectural family of the Adams (Adams Family, geddit?) before paying my respects to the much simpler tomb of Hutton, the Scottish Enlightenment scientist and father of modern geology. I removed no body parts from anyone present, living, dead or in-between. Not that anyone can prove anyway, moo hoo hah hah. Then off to visually catalogue more pubs of Edinburgh with my digital camera (work in progress, not just a pub crawl).